Merriam-Webster's web site offers a service where they email you the word of the day. ?The Word of the Day for September 22 is:

lotusland ? LOH-tus-land ? noun
? ?*1 : a place inducing contentment especially through offering an idyllic living and work environment
? ? 2 : a state or an ideal marked by contentment often achieved through self-indulgence

Example sentence: With its white sands, stunningly blue water, and beautiful sunsets, the island is a lotusland for beach lovers.

When you send an email, Lotus Notes allows you to choose if you want to save a copy in a folder. ?This is configured in File - Preferences - User Preferences, under Mail - General.



You can choose to never have messages be automatically saved, always saved, or you can be prompted to choose on each email you send.



To help keep my mail file small, I choose "Never". ?However, of course there are times when I do want to save an important email. ?In those cases I simply hit "Send and File..." as opposed to just "Send".



Alternately, when you are done composing an email you can hit the Escape (Esc) key on your keyboard, and then choose to Send Only, Save Only (goes to your Drafts folder), or Send and Save.



I blogged about using "Esc" previously in Closing Documents, if you would like to read about more details on this feature.

I happened across a reference to the JFGI site today. Brilliant.

JFGI, it's the new RTFM. Oh, and the JFGI mail archive has some real gems in it too.

(Author's Note: if you don't know what JFGI or RTFM means, please visit the JFGI site and follow the instructions. You're welcome.)

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I needed a good laugh tonight, and this James Blunt parody was it! ? It's only 2 minutes, so listen to it all, the ending is worth it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hjhi_FHxY8k

My Dad recently got the Animusic 2 DVD for us and... wow! Not only is this thing amazing to watch, but it's completely hypnotic for the kids. And they want to watch it over, and over, and over...

The whole thing is 3-D animation of robots and machines playing synthesized music -- there are robots playing drums, balls of light shooting into musical blocks, 2-string guitars that bounce around and play their own strings. It's all just mesmerizing.

My recommendation on where to start is the Pipe Dreams 2 video, and if that catches your interest you can follow up with Pogo Sticks.

The YouTube clips don't even come close to doing it justice either. You've really got to watch these things on a DVD hooked up to a stereo system to appreciate what's going on. Trippy and fun.

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One of the upcoming features planned for the next version of Domino is the ability to recall an email you sent in error. ?Until that time, you still have a few options, and a few best practices you can follow to minimize the "Opps, I did not mean to send that!" syndrome.

Cut #7: Unsending e-mail is short 4 minute podcast that I encourage you to listen to. ?Also listen to the other topics if you have not already!

Lotus Notes allows you to look at your calendar in many different formats. ?The options are divided up into groups based on Day, Week, and Month.



To switch to a different view, click on the underlined word "Day", "Week", or "Month" in the tabs at the top of the calendar view.

If you want to choose a specific type of view from one of the groups, click on the triangle next to the word, and you will be presented a list of choices that you can select from.



My personal favourite is the two-day view. ? It lets me know what I have to do today, as well as allows me to think ahead about what I have coming up tomorrow. ? I can also see multiple time zones. ? I sometimes switch to the 5 day work week view to get a quick glance at what my entire week looks line, and for longer term planning (booking trips, looking at my weekends), I switch to the month view.

In case you are a new reader to this site, or if you just need a refresher, I thought I'd link back to a few previous topics which provide details about how you can configure what the various views display: Calendar Preferences - Display Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. ? Similarly, here are some posts which will help you navigate around your calendar: Navigating Your Notes Calendar - Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Which is your favourite calendar style and why? ?Is there a format missing that you would like see?

Just a little public service announcement for you: the Firefly DVD box set is on sale at Target this week for only $18.99. Retail price is $49.99, and normal Amazon.com price is around $35, so that's a great deal.

The Serenity DVD is also on sale at Target this week for $10, so if you (or one of your friends) have been holding off on buying either of these videos, now's a good time.

Not sure if this is in preparation for the Hi-Def Firefly release coming later this month or not (thanks to Jess for that link), but either way it's a good price.

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There has been a lot of talk lately about the resurgence of interest in Lotus Notes, and what evangelists can do to help others understand what Lotus Notes can do. ?Last night Julian Robichaux, Bruce Elgort, Eric Mack, and myself recorded Taking Notes Episode 31 - Helping People ’Get’ Notes.

A variety of topics were discussed, including:

• Eric's recent blog entries Why don't people get Notes and How to save a Lotus Notes customer
• Julian's related blog entry called Lotus Notes - Yeah, It Can Do That Too and my take on it
• Ways to boil down the complexity of Notes into something that people can understand, like the "killer app" concept
• How big a part does the user interface and "sexiness" of an application play in user acceptance of a technology like Notes?
• How all this relates to selling Activity Explorer when Hannover comes out
• When is it time to talk about the end-result instead of the technology?

The last point is one that is especially important to me. ? I'd really like to see more people focused on what our products do, rather than what brand name they are associated with, or what programming language they were written in.

Episode 31 was sponsored by Collaboration University, and is 27.6mb and is 48 minutes long. ? I encourage you to please listen to it, maybe over lunch on your computer, or your ride to work via your music player.

Yesterday Ed Brill (Lotus) and Peter de Hass (Microsoft) both blogged about the consistency, or lack of in the user experience of Microsoft products. ?Ed mentions the perception amongst some customers that Microsoft products are "easier for our users" and "we won't have to do training". ?He highlights several examples where this is not true, and how Microsoft products can be very different, and often difficult to use. ?Peter of course expresses the opposite opinion, and states "opinions are being formed out there by people who have not actually seen, let alone worked with the new Office 2007 UI (and ribbon)." ?I agree with Peter. ?I don't think people should make final judgements on things based on speculation, rumour, or uninformed opinions.

So with that said, I wanted to blog today about my experiences with Outlook 2007, a product I do know a lot about. ?It is not my intention to stir up an "Outlook versus Notes" debate. ?My goal to simply provide Lotus Notes customers with some facts about Outlook 2007, which they can use when having discussions with people who insist that Outlook's UI is better than Notes.

The first thing most reviewers point out about Outlook 2007 is how the user interface (UI) for the inbox differs from the UI when creating a document. ?Below is the UI in Outlook 2007's In-box. ? There is no Ribbon, instead the pre-2007 menus and toolbars.


Here is the UI when composing a mail message. ?There is a Ribbon.


I don't think this is a huge deal, but it does provide a tangible example of inconsistency, something Microsoft loves to take issue with Lotus about. ?I expect Microsoft will fix this at some point, perhaps even for the gold-release.

My top concern about using Outlook, is that in the main screen, there are more than a dozen different "widgets" which ?users need to understand. ? Many of them seem to do similar things (open/close, drop down, flyout, etc), so why are so many different conventions used?



Taking a closer look.... Double arrows, plus/minus, and triangles?
?

Here are four different shapes all next to each other. ?What is the difference between a solid triangle and a triangle with a line over it? ? Don't they both cause drop down boxes to appear?



When composing a message I see the solid down triangle (under Account), the down triangle with a line over it (at the top), as well as new shape, an arrow pointing down and right. (next to Clipboard)


Why do the dots here mean drag to Resize?


While here they indicate to me that I can Move (not resize) the toolbar?


I love this screen. ?"Calendar, My Calendars, Calendar, Browse Calendar, Send a Calendar, Publish Calendar..." ?Do you think the developers get paid by the number of times they use the word calendar per inch? ?:-)



I am not pointing out these things in an effort to bash the Microsoft user experience. ? Honestly, for some things I think it is fine, while for others I personally find it very un-intuitive, and inconsistent. ? But it is obvious that there is a lot for users to learn/understand. ? My hope is that people will simply be fair, and not bash the Notes UI while claiming how great Microsoft's is without looking at the true situation. ?The above examples only took me five minutes to point out, and they are from a single product, Outlook. ? I hate to think what I would discover doing an in depth comparison of Outlook, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Messenger, Groove, InfoPath, OneNote, SharePoint, etc.

Lotus Notes/Domino developer Julian Robichaux (also of Taking Notes fame) had a great post a few days around a Lotus Notes rogue marketing idea... "yeah, it can do that too".


He sums up nicely what has always been Lotus Notes greatest strength, and at times its great weakness, "the product does so much that it's hard to give a good one-line, sound bite description of it. In fact, it's quite impossible".

Even just explaining to people the difference between Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino takes some time. ?(I've tried to explain it here)

To some Lotus Notes is just email and calendar, while for others their entire business runs on Domino by utilizing applications such as HelpDesk, Customer Tracking, Supply Chain, and more. ? One of my favourite examples is how most of the Major League Baseball (MLB) teams rely on Notes and Domino for their player scouting. ?I've covered this topic in more detail in Unmatched Application Development Platform. ?Recently I even discussed how Lotus Notes/Domino can be used for Blogs, Wikis, and Bulletin Boards. ? The possibilities are endless.

My Lotus Notes Workspace has a dozen tabs, each with dozens of databases. ? I can't imagine my daily life without Notes, and I don't mean just for work. ?I have TONS of information stored in databases, both professional and personal such as stock portfolios, music and movie catalogs, and mailing lists and phone numbers.

Some people "get it" and are AMAZED by Notes, while others can be sceptical at first of any "one product does it all" type solution. ?So how do you explain this to your boss, or more importantly to a new customer?

Let's have some fun, and how about you share a few stories on how you personally, and your company professionally use Notes (and companion products like Sametime, QuickPlace, and WebSphere Portal). ? What methods were effective in "selling" Lotus Notes/Domino to your organization?

Okay, here's my idea for a new Lotus Notes advertising campaign (click for a larger image):

I've been thinking that one of the problems with "selling" Notes inside an organization (elevator pitches, discussing with management, etc.) is that the product does so much that it's hard to give a good one-line, sound bite description of it. In fact, it's quite impossible. I think that the new, PHB-sized whitepapers are a great idea, but I still wanted something short and sweet.

So I figured that the best thing might be to embrace the diversity of the Notes platform, rather than try to boil it down somehow. And that's what I came up with: "Lotus Notes - yeah, it can do that too".

Need e-mail? Yeah, it can do that. Client and web applications? Yeah, that too. Portal? Yeah. Blog, wiki, RSS reader? Yes, yes, yes. Web services? Yes, we could do this all day...

I'll be the first to admit that the actual graphic design I came up with could be greatly improved upon (and please, I would love to see other variations on this theme), but I think the idea could work. Whatcha think?

p.s. -- I know that the comment system I'm using right now (Enetation) is broken. It's been in steady decline for a while now, and I'm going to switch it soon. For now, if you want to comment but can't, feel free to do so on your own blog. I won't be offended.
;-)

UPDATE: other bloggers weighing in so far -- Curt Stone, Scott Gentzen, Chris Linfoot, Andy Broyles, Chris Blatnick, Thomas Adrian, Tim Tripcony, Ian Irving, and Notes super-tipster Alan Lepofsky (who made the colors on the banner a little snazzier too).

Ed Brill picked up the theme too, relating it to a recent Eric Mack post.

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Announcing two new Lotus Notes/Domino whitepapers available on lotus.com

IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino roadmap. - Continued innovation without migration

• Seamless upgrades
• Taking team collaboration to a new level
• More than messaging: collaboration tools and the foundation for a security-rich infrastructure
• Greater innovation and interoperability
• Announcing even more powerful Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino software
• Get ready to enrich and extend your world-class collaboration infrastructure

A preview of the next release of IBM Lotus Notes software— code name: "Hannover"

• A new user experience and a seamless step forward
• Providing investment protection
• Offering more choices with extended multiplatform support
• Benefits of a server-managed client architecture
• “Hannover” and Lotus Domino server
• Moving your business forward with “Hannover”

Please make sure all of the IT staff and decision makers in your company take 10 minutes and read this.

IBM's Christopher Pepin has written instructions showing you how to use Sametime 7.5 to instant message with IBMers. ? ?Please see Communicate with IBM employees via ?Sametime 7.5 for details. ? Log-on and send me a hello.

Since I began this blog, I've been living with the guilt that I've been breaking one of the primary rules of blogging, I did not have a "Blog Roll". ? The idea of a Blog Roll is that you provide links to the other blogs you read, they then do so for you in return, and thus an interweaved community (the blogsphere) is formed.

Well I've finally decided to take the plunge. ? On the left side navigator you will now see "My Blog Roll". ? It is certainly not complete, and subject to change (mainly additions) at any time.

I feel like this is an acceptance speech at an award show, and I know I've forgotten to thank somebody! ? ?So to any names I've not listed, please accept my apology.

Just to head off any technical support requests for Stubby or the Weather Fetcher database, please let me remind you that Lotus Notes agents that call web services from a server require a security access of 2. Allow restricted operations.

This is because they're making network connections, which is a restricted operation. In addition, the person who signs the agent needs to have the following access set on the server document of the server the agent runs on:

• Run unrestricted methods and operations
• Run restricted LotusScript/Java agents

If not, you get errors like:

java.lang.SecurityException: not allowed to make a socket connection to www.foo.com

And don't get me started on the loose naming convention that was used, which allowed "unrestricted" and "restricted" to mean the same thing. I've talked about that already, long ago.

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There is a new article on developerWorks, Understanding quotas for IBM Lotus Domino mail databases. ? While most of the article is for administrators, it does includes sections that I think you should read: User experience with quotas and User experience with router-enforced quotas

So what is a Quota? ? It is the maximum size a database (mail file) is allowed to grow. ?For example, your company may have rules in place stating that your mail file can grow no larger than 500 MB.

Databases can also have a warning "Threshold" which helps you know when you are approaching your quota. ? If your mail file quota is 500 MB, a threshold warning of 400 MB might make sense.



When your mail exceeds its warning threshold, you will receive an error when you open your mail database and you will receive an email that provides you details about the warning.



If you allow your mail file to grow past its quota, you will find that you can no longer save messages (outgoing emails, drafts), and depending on how your company has configured your system, you may not be able to receive any new emails until you reduce the size of your mail to below its quota.

I just posted a slightly updated version of Stubby: the Axis Stub File Generator Database to the OpenNTF site. It's version 1.1. There were no bug fixes, but I did add the following features:

• You can now pass a user name and password to authenticate (for basic authentication) or pass a session cookie (for session-based authentication) when you're calling a web service method. I also provided information on how this works in the example agent code that is generated.

• The Java source files are now zipped up with their directory structure intact, and the zip file stored on the Stubby document. This is convenient if you want to recompile the source files yourself (from scratch).

If you want to do the authentication thing, you'll need to recreate the stub files in the new database first (which should take all of about 5 seconds). I had to hack the service interface class a tiny bit to give you easy access to a method that's available in the stub class that gets generated. Don't ask... just enjoy.

For a little more information on the Stubby database and what it does, please see my previous blog entry about it.

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In the blog entry "Sections - Authoring Lengthy Documents Part 1" I explained one of the techniques that you can use to make lengthy electronic documents easier to read on screen. ? Today I'll cover another that helps users navigate a lengthy document on screen, Anchor Links.

Anchor links allow you to define specific points in a document that people can "jump to" by clicking on a link icon. ? As an example, say you are creating a document that has many pages, or chapters. ? You could create a Table Of Contents at the top of the document with links to each chapter below. ?This would enable the reader to quickly and easily jump to specific places in the document without having to scroll down.

With the document in edit mode, place your cursor where you want the "anchor" to go.


From the menus choose Edit - Copy as Link - Anchor Link


Lotus Notes will insert an icon representing the anchor as shown below. ? This link is only visible when you are in edit mode, users reading the document will not see these icons.


Now place your cursor in the spot where you want the link to be created and Paste. (CTRL+V, or Edit - Paste, or right click - Paste)
It is here that the reader will click to be taken to the anchor spot you created above. ?Lotus Notes will insert the link icon as shown below.



Repeat this process for all the anchor links you wish to create in the document. ? I also like to create links back to the top of the document as shown below. ?By doing this you end up with links from the top of the document down to specific areas (red, blue, and green lines) as well as links back to the top of the document (orange line)



In my experience Anchor Links seem to be very under-used, or often not known at all. ? I hope this tip helps explain them to you, and that you can start using them effectively. ?

UPDATE: Looks like Phillipe Gauvin described this technique two months ago on his blog. I was scooped again! Nice job, Phillipe.

Yesterday I mentioned how easy it was to use script.aculo.us to create an auto-complete text box on a Domino web page. There's an example in my Weather Fetcher database (the "CityLookupAjax" Page), but if you want the step-by-step instructions, here they are:

1. Download the script.aculo.us library and extract the contents of the zip file to your hard drive.

2. Add the following files as JavaScript Script Libraries in a Lotus Notes database:

• prototype.js (from the /lib folder, all the other files are in the /src folder)
• scriptaculous.js
• builder.js
• controls.js
• dragdrop.js
• effects.js
• slider.js
• unittest.js

For each .js file, you need to create a new JavaScript Script Library, paste the contents of the .js file in, and name the Script Library exactly the same name as the .js file (like "prototype.js").

3. Create a new Page in the database and include the "prototype.js" and "scriptaculous.js" libraries. You can do this by going to the "JS Header" part of the page (a few items below where you set the Window Title), right-clicking in the script area, and choosing "Insert Resource". Here's a screenshot (click it to see the full-size image):

4. Add the following style definitions to the "HTML Head Content" section of the page:

"

"

You can paste it in just like that, with quotation marks and everything (that way it's a valid Formula language string).

5. Add the following text on the Page, as Pass-Through HTML:

Lookup: 

So you have a text input field called "lookupField", with a div called "lookupDiv" that will display the auto-complete results, and you're creating an Ajax.Autocompleter that will listen on that field and call an agent called "LookupAgent" to get the values that will be displayed for the auto-completer.

You could do this with a regular field on a Form too, just set the HTML ID property on the field and paste the div and script parts afterwards. Please note that you have to put the "new Ajax.Autocompleter" line AFTER the lookup field on the page/form.

6. Save and close the Page, because you're done with that. Create a LotusScript agent called "LookupAgent" that looks something like this:

Sub Initialize
	Dim session As New NotesSession
	Dim doc As NotesDocument
	Dim q As String, qArray As Variant
	Dim decodeVal As Variant
	Dim fieldName As String
	Dim lookupVal As String
	
	'** get the request (HTTP POST request)
	Set doc = session.DocumentContext
	q = doc.Request_Content(0)
	qArray = Split(q, "&")
	fieldName = "lookupval"
	
	Forall stuff In qArray
		decodeVal = Evaluate(|@URLDecode("Domino";"| & _
		stuff & |")|)
		
		If (Instr(1, decodeVal(0), fieldName, 5) = 1) Then
			lookupVal = Strright(decodeVal(0), fieldName & "=")
		End If
	End Forall
	
	'** find the matches
	Dim db As NotesDatabase
	Dim view As NotesView
	Dim vc As NotesViewEntryCollection
	Dim ve As NotesViewEntry
	Dim returnString As String
	
	Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
	Set view = db.GetView("MyLookupView")  '** MODIFY THIS
	Set vc = view.GetAllEntriesByKey(lookupVal, False)
	Set ve = vc.GetFirstEntry
	
	Do Until (ve Is Nothing)
		returnString = returnString & "
" & _
		ve.ColumnValues(0) & "
"
		Set ve = vc.GetNextEntry(ve)
	Loop
	
	'** return a 
 list, which is what script.aculo.us wants
	returnString = "
" & returnString & "
"
	
	Print |Content-Type: text/plain|
	Print |Cache-Control: private|
	Print ||
	Print returnString
End Sub

The agent is a little bit long, but not really complicated. It gets the value entered in our lookup field (passed as an HTTP POST parameter called "lookupval", as defined in the Ajax.Autocompleter params), looks the value up in a view, and returns the results as a

list, which is what script.aculo.us is expecting.

Ideally you would do lookups against a static list rather than hitting a view each time, but this should be okay for a small view.

In any case, now you're done! Open your Page as a web page and watch the Ajax goodness. It should look something like this:



UPDATE #2: Phillipe Gauvin just added a comment with another nice way to work with HTTP POST data:

• Instead of calling an agent, make a URL call to create a document with ?CreateDocument
• The "LookupVal" field on the form will contain the lookup value that is being passed
• The other field on the form should have a computed value of something like this:

val := @DbLookup("":"nocache"; "";"myview"; lookupVal; 1);
@If(@IsError(val); ""; "

" + @Implode("
• " + val + "
") + "

")



• You can also set a $SaveOptions field of "0" to not save the new document

I haven't tried this before, but I'd guess you also have to hide everything but the computed field, have the form set to "Content Type: HTML" or "Content Type: Other", and allow anonymous users to create new documents. I won't know until I've played around with it. Pretty interesting technique.

technorati tag: Show-n-tell thursday, SnTT

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